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The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography by Martin W. Lewis Kren Wigen
In this thoughtful and engaging critique, geographer Martin W. Lewis and historian Kären Wigen reexamine the basic geographical divisions we take for granted, and challenge the unconscious spatial frameworks that govern the way we perceive the world. Arguing that notions of East vs. West, First World vs. Third World, and even the sevenfold continental system are simplistic and misconceived, the authors trace the history of such misconceptions. Their up-to-the-minute study reflects both on the global scale and its relation to the specific continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa—actually part of one contiguous landmass.The Myth of Continents sheds new light on how our metageographical assumptions grew out of cultural how the first continental divisions developed from classical times; how the Urals became the division between the so-called continents of Europe and Asia; how countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan recently shifted macroregions in the general consciousness.This extremely readable and thought-provoking analysis also explores the ways that new economic regions, the end of the cold war, and the proliferation of communication technologies change our understanding of the world. It stimulates thinking about the role of large-scale spatial constructs as driving forces behind particular worldviews and encourages everyone to take a more thoughtful, geographically informed approach to the task of describing and interpreting the human diversity of the planet.
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First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 21, 2018
It almost took a year, but I finally made it through. So many people asked me why I didn't just quit a year ago, but there were way too many interesting topics under discussion for me to bail. It was just too bad that all those fantastic notions were doled out in the most pretentious language possible. I'm sure the authors think they were just being scholarly and precise; I can barely stop myself from calling them pretentious douchebags. Anyway, slogging through all that language made this bearable only in one-page increments.
Amusingly, when I did make it to the end of the book, I was slightly underwhelmed with how they presented their world regional model of metageography... then talked about it for one short page before concluding the book. One! I suppose they thought they'd built a sufficient case by deconstructing every other bit of metageography already out there, but I'm going to disagree. As nightmarish as I find the idea of more pages, I think they could have fleshed their model out a little more.
The thing that really struck me when I started was how much it reminded me of my first semester in library school. It was all welcome to library school, now let's discuss what information is and, by the way, we don't really know how to define information precisely. This seems very much like the geography 101 version of that and I was delighted to partake in another discipline's navel gazing. And, of course I want to play along, so here is my proposed model of metageography for the planet. Thank you to whomever came up with the meme first.
Amusingly, when I did make it to the end of the book, I was slightly underwhelmed with how they presented their world regional model of metageography... then talked about it for one short page before concluding the book. One! I suppose they thought they'd built a sufficient case by deconstructing every other bit of metageography already out there, but I'm going to disagree. As nightmarish as I find the idea of more pages, I think they could have fleshed their model out a little more.
The thing that really struck me when I started was how much it reminded me of my first semester in library school. It was all welcome to library school, now let's discuss what information is and, by the way, we don't really know how to define information precisely. This seems very much like the geography 101 version of that and I was delighted to partake in another discipline's navel gazing. And, of course I want to play along, so here is my proposed model of metageography for the planet. Thank you to whomever came up with the meme first.
May 26, 2008
"OMG, Continents are fake!" i thought to myself, elven pages in.
This may seem a bit silly, but the idea of continents as artificial constructions that we delineate just struck me as such a revolutionary rebellion against 20 years of American education that it gave me pause. Wigen and Lewis examine the idea of continents as a construction, but dont' really have a very powerful suggestion for the ways we can replace our outdated continental systems. That said, its an intriguing read for anyone wanting to think more about the politics of space and naming.
This may seem a bit silly, but the idea of continents as artificial constructions that we delineate just struck me as such a revolutionary rebellion against 20 years of American education that it gave me pause. Wigen and Lewis examine the idea of continents as a construction, but dont' really have a very powerful suggestion for the ways we can replace our outdated continental systems. That said, its an intriguing read for anyone wanting to think more about the politics of space and naming.
September 10, 2025
Me patiently waiting to really like a book this semester…
September 10, 2025
So meta it made my head hurt.
I understood the argument and the reasoning behind it, but the writing made my head want to explode.
I have never read such a short but dense book.
Very obviously written in the 90s.
I understood the argument and the reasoning behind it, but the writing made my head want to explode.
I have never read such a short but dense book.
Very obviously written in the 90s.
September 7, 2015
A fantastic book for changing the way you think about geography. It may not set up an alternative "metageography" as well as it deconstructs the existing options, but it does a good job of clearing out eurocentric/reductionist perspectives and surveying the history of geographic thought. The world regionalization set out in the end, while not ultimate, is fairly compelling, and definitely superior to any other available (culture-based) system that I know of.
January 2, 2021
This book demonstrates how the idea of continents is really a social and cultural construct. By exploring the intellectual history of continents as well as both the messiness of the borders and the internal incoherence, the author shows that continents are unwieldy, inaccurate, and have changed massively over time. I especially appreciated that so many maps were included to show exactly what they are talking about.
March 29, 2015
People should know about this.
September 21, 2024
If is difficult to decide where to begin with this bombshell of a book.
I suppose I should start with a personal anecdote, as long ago while playing the board game Axis and Allies, I noticed that Europe is depicted on a much larger scale relative to the other continents. This emphasises that Europe is the key to the game and the place where the most pieces will be located, heightening its importance relative to Asia and Africa despite being physically so much smaller.
The authors here argue that this is at the root of our whole understanding of geography, since our maps are based on European antecedents.
First off, I should explain that the core of this work is the notion that geography is a social construct and is often constructed for our convenience. All of the continents and oceans, all of the regions, were named by Europeans and delineated along arbitrary lines drawn by European cartographers.
A term like the Middle East makes no sense unless its in relation to Europe, and a term like Latin America was intentionally created by the French in the 1860s to justify their imperial incursions in Mexico.
Thus we see the planet is divided along many lines, political, historical, cultural, linguistic, economic, physical, sometimes even zoological.
Then the European nation-state ideal is grafted over this, which adds to more confusion as we subconsciously divide the world along these political lines.
The problem is that all of these overlap, and that regions of some states are more appropriately grouped with other criteria, for example the authors note that Western China is usually included in the Far East, but culturally and linguistically it is more akin to Central Asia.
Some alternative schemes include using the oceans as a unifier, as in the Pacific Rim that embraces East Asia and Western America. Another interesting one is African Atlantic, which is often buried under our formal maps but which overlaps with Latin America and West Africa.
The authors argue that in a large measure geography has used Europe as the default, and has contrasted the rest of the world with a supposed European ideal. One where Europe is dynamic and progressive, and where the rest, especially Asia, is stagnant and despotic. This runs deep in European philosophical tradition, for example in Hegel, Marx, and Wittfogel.
An interesting example of the pernicious influence of the nation-state is mentioned by the authors in the division of New Guinea, where Indonesia is considered part of Southeast Asia while Papua New Guinea is part of Oceania, even though the division through New Guinea is completely imaginary.
Other examples of a colonial mindset can be Indochina, which the authors say is an illogical idea that was willed into existence by French imperialism. Laos and Cambodia, they argue, are closer to Thailand, and Vietnam is more closely related in culture and outlook to China.
This work is overall very fascinating, and should be read by anyone interested in geography. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though the notes and the bibliography are massive, which makes reading it sometimes difficult.
Yet I would like to highlight that this book goes far to demonstrate that the way the humanities operate is often through the creation of arbitrary constructs. Our map of the world is one, language is another, where we give the name language to some, and dialect to others, based on no clear-cut criteria. History, of course, is another, and like language and geography, it is self-serving.
All of these, and more, we create for our own convenience and for our own requirements. The European construct of the rest of the world was a mirror in which they could see the reflexion of all their own positive attributes, juxtaposed alongside the supposed shortcomings of the non-European world.
In the same way linguists say Low German is a dialect but Dutch is a language, in order to maintain the fiction of the German and Dutch nation-states. And indeed, in the same way that historians would see their own day in the past, or what they want their own day to be.
This book stimulates and invites one to view these facts in regard to geography, and while it fails to provide a replacement (using a regions theory along continental lines), it shows us how to think above and below our basic categorisations.
It asks us to question and refine our maps, to look deeper and to see the connexions that are often hidden. Highly recommended.
I suppose I should start with a personal anecdote, as long ago while playing the board game Axis and Allies, I noticed that Europe is depicted on a much larger scale relative to the other continents. This emphasises that Europe is the key to the game and the place where the most pieces will be located, heightening its importance relative to Asia and Africa despite being physically so much smaller.
The authors here argue that this is at the root of our whole understanding of geography, since our maps are based on European antecedents.
First off, I should explain that the core of this work is the notion that geography is a social construct and is often constructed for our convenience. All of the continents and oceans, all of the regions, were named by Europeans and delineated along arbitrary lines drawn by European cartographers.
A term like the Middle East makes no sense unless its in relation to Europe, and a term like Latin America was intentionally created by the French in the 1860s to justify their imperial incursions in Mexico.
Thus we see the planet is divided along many lines, political, historical, cultural, linguistic, economic, physical, sometimes even zoological.
Then the European nation-state ideal is grafted over this, which adds to more confusion as we subconsciously divide the world along these political lines.
The problem is that all of these overlap, and that regions of some states are more appropriately grouped with other criteria, for example the authors note that Western China is usually included in the Far East, but culturally and linguistically it is more akin to Central Asia.
Some alternative schemes include using the oceans as a unifier, as in the Pacific Rim that embraces East Asia and Western America. Another interesting one is African Atlantic, which is often buried under our formal maps but which overlaps with Latin America and West Africa.
The authors argue that in a large measure geography has used Europe as the default, and has contrasted the rest of the world with a supposed European ideal. One where Europe is dynamic and progressive, and where the rest, especially Asia, is stagnant and despotic. This runs deep in European philosophical tradition, for example in Hegel, Marx, and Wittfogel.
An interesting example of the pernicious influence of the nation-state is mentioned by the authors in the division of New Guinea, where Indonesia is considered part of Southeast Asia while Papua New Guinea is part of Oceania, even though the division through New Guinea is completely imaginary.
Other examples of a colonial mindset can be Indochina, which the authors say is an illogical idea that was willed into existence by French imperialism. Laos and Cambodia, they argue, are closer to Thailand, and Vietnam is more closely related in culture and outlook to China.
This work is overall very fascinating, and should be read by anyone interested in geography. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though the notes and the bibliography are massive, which makes reading it sometimes difficult.
Yet I would like to highlight that this book goes far to demonstrate that the way the humanities operate is often through the creation of arbitrary constructs. Our map of the world is one, language is another, where we give the name language to some, and dialect to others, based on no clear-cut criteria. History, of course, is another, and like language and geography, it is self-serving.
All of these, and more, we create for our own convenience and for our own requirements. The European construct of the rest of the world was a mirror in which they could see the reflexion of all their own positive attributes, juxtaposed alongside the supposed shortcomings of the non-European world.
In the same way linguists say Low German is a dialect but Dutch is a language, in order to maintain the fiction of the German and Dutch nation-states. And indeed, in the same way that historians would see their own day in the past, or what they want their own day to be.
This book stimulates and invites one to view these facts in regard to geography, and while it fails to provide a replacement (using a regions theory along continental lines), it shows us how to think above and below our basic categorisations.
It asks us to question and refine our maps, to look deeper and to see the connexions that are often hidden. Highly recommended.
December 30, 2023
An interesting book with a valuable premise, but burdened by a number of major flaws and limitations.
Firstly, the book adopts an enormously uncritical us-centric perspective, essentially reading as a textbook aimed solely solely at American research students. It routinely instructs ‘American students’ and comments solely on ‘American academia’, whilst also privileging the nation as essentially establishing regional categories top-down to the rest of the world and that the US has the final say in ‘formalising’ a new concept.
Secondly, and typical of American academia, the book is extremely depoliticised and with a continuous and deliberate centrist, albeit undoubtedly ‘progressive’ approach. Perhaps due to its textbook style, while critiquing the prior concepts proposed by all sides of politics, the book lacks any sense of political urgency or engagement in a political tradition. Perhaps I’m too used to reading critical and postcolonial theory, but the book had a disappointingly dry sense of depoliticisation in the name of an abstract ‘objective knowledge’. However, this did have some benefits of allowing a more widely encompassing critique of a broad range of political theories.
Thirdly, it’s critique of various authors and traditions were virtually strawman through an off-hand comment with no referenced example to prove the authors criticism. The critique of Edward Said, the ‘cultural left’ and ‘postmodernism’ in particular saw debatable one-sentence criticisms with no actual reference of an example of their work which proves that this was their belief. For example, Said absolutely did not believe that europe had a fixed unchanging imperial culture, and Orientalism explicitly traces how it changes over time in (as I recall) 3 broad phases and arguments between orientalists and anglicists in India. Further typical of the depoliticisation of the book, the real political reasons behind many of Said’s beliefs saw no mention whatsoever, sending the message that Said was just an armchair theorist trying to establish an ‘objective’ view of the world rather than a man with a real political mission of Palestinian liberation and finding a place in the world as an Arab-American stuck between both cultures.
Fourthly, the lack of virulent critique against Huntington, Fukuyama and other reactionary theories (but especially Huntington) of the 90s which laid the foundation for debases of war in the Middle East was disappointing. The depoliticisation of the book meant they were included as just another interesting academic theory rather than a deadly paradigm for bigotry and pro-war propaganda.
Overall, whilst a book critiquing continents and ‘metageography’ is very much needed, this book was disappointing. It read far too much like a purely academic textbook style of a few academics in discussion at a solely American academia conference. The US-centrism was excruciatingly bad at times, and as an Australian academic it almost made me want to put the back down as it just reiterated the American view of the world where it is the self-perceived centre of knowledge and information. There was virtually no mention or engagement with people or political movements outside of academia, leading it to seem quite detached from the real world and any desire to actually ‘act’ beyond just making academic geography a little more conceptually accurate. Whilst this is a good goal in itself, it resulted in the book being disappointing and problematic itself despite an extremely promising premise.
Firstly, the book adopts an enormously uncritical us-centric perspective, essentially reading as a textbook aimed solely solely at American research students. It routinely instructs ‘American students’ and comments solely on ‘American academia’, whilst also privileging the nation as essentially establishing regional categories top-down to the rest of the world and that the US has the final say in ‘formalising’ a new concept.
Secondly, and typical of American academia, the book is extremely depoliticised and with a continuous and deliberate centrist, albeit undoubtedly ‘progressive’ approach. Perhaps due to its textbook style, while critiquing the prior concepts proposed by all sides of politics, the book lacks any sense of political urgency or engagement in a political tradition. Perhaps I’m too used to reading critical and postcolonial theory, but the book had a disappointingly dry sense of depoliticisation in the name of an abstract ‘objective knowledge’. However, this did have some benefits of allowing a more widely encompassing critique of a broad range of political theories.
Thirdly, it’s critique of various authors and traditions were virtually strawman through an off-hand comment with no referenced example to prove the authors criticism. The critique of Edward Said, the ‘cultural left’ and ‘postmodernism’ in particular saw debatable one-sentence criticisms with no actual reference of an example of their work which proves that this was their belief. For example, Said absolutely did not believe that europe had a fixed unchanging imperial culture, and Orientalism explicitly traces how it changes over time in (as I recall) 3 broad phases and arguments between orientalists and anglicists in India. Further typical of the depoliticisation of the book, the real political reasons behind many of Said’s beliefs saw no mention whatsoever, sending the message that Said was just an armchair theorist trying to establish an ‘objective’ view of the world rather than a man with a real political mission of Palestinian liberation and finding a place in the world as an Arab-American stuck between both cultures.
Fourthly, the lack of virulent critique against Huntington, Fukuyama and other reactionary theories (but especially Huntington) of the 90s which laid the foundation for debases of war in the Middle East was disappointing. The depoliticisation of the book meant they were included as just another interesting academic theory rather than a deadly paradigm for bigotry and pro-war propaganda.
Overall, whilst a book critiquing continents and ‘metageography’ is very much needed, this book was disappointing. It read far too much like a purely academic textbook style of a few academics in discussion at a solely American academia conference. The US-centrism was excruciatingly bad at times, and as an Australian academic it almost made me want to put the back down as it just reiterated the American view of the world where it is the self-perceived centre of knowledge and information. There was virtually no mention or engagement with people or political movements outside of academia, leading it to seem quite detached from the real world and any desire to actually ‘act’ beyond just making academic geography a little more conceptually accurate. Whilst this is a good goal in itself, it resulted in the book being disappointing and problematic itself despite an extremely promising premise.
November 9, 2022
A brilliant book examining the history of ideas we use to grasp the world around us, and the map we use as proxy. Examining such conceptual frameworks as East vs. West, Oriental vs. Occidental, and the way we divide the world map into continents or into world regions, the authors look at how these ideas were formed, their European origins in things as diverse as ancient history, military strategy, or imperial conquest, and how they've since long outlived their usefullness.
The authors passionately and eloquently argue for a geographical understanding of the world based not on outdated beliefs of how the world /WAS/, or on racist ideas of people within a certain area all sharing the same group of traits, while others from another area share in another group ("geographic concordance"), instead advocating for a heuristic understanding of the world split into regions that are bound together by shared historical, cultural, and societal ties developed throughout the history of the people groups in question, though such a method is still relatively imperfect, as the zones of Southeast Asia and Central Asia exemplify.
An urgent, masterful corrective against the outdated but sadly all too common way of thinking about the world as a dark canvas lit up only by a few civilizations here and there, with only thing changing being which peoples or civilizations get to be in the spotlight.
This book is one of the best ones I've ever read that tackles the full diversity of the world, its people, and the tendency of humanity to elude simple categorization. The points posited here are imperfect, as the authors themselves state, but they are much, MUCH better than what came before. Highly recommended.
The authors passionately and eloquently argue for a geographical understanding of the world based not on outdated beliefs of how the world /WAS/, or on racist ideas of people within a certain area all sharing the same group of traits, while others from another area share in another group ("geographic concordance"), instead advocating for a heuristic understanding of the world split into regions that are bound together by shared historical, cultural, and societal ties developed throughout the history of the people groups in question, though such a method is still relatively imperfect, as the zones of Southeast Asia and Central Asia exemplify.
An urgent, masterful corrective against the outdated but sadly all too common way of thinking about the world as a dark canvas lit up only by a few civilizations here and there, with only thing changing being which peoples or civilizations get to be in the spotlight.
This book is one of the best ones I've ever read that tackles the full diversity of the world, its people, and the tendency of humanity to elude simple categorization. The points posited here are imperfect, as the authors themselves state, but they are much, MUCH better than what came before. Highly recommended.
November 24, 2018
Sometimes it's useful to go meta- to explore how we use concepts, can't get away from them, or how it hurts when we try.
I'd been meaning to read a book like this for about three to four years now. It nagged: why won't anyone talk to me about the names and borders of continents and how little sense they really make? It must all be a horrendous mistake on the part of historical contingency and the whim of the imperialist textbook complex. It pervades: why does it still feel so odd to say "we're Asian-American"?
Lewis and Wigen don't touch too much upon ethnic and racial categories of identity, but that is not really their topic. Their subject is this world map we're indoctrinated with as children, a map that is both illogical, outdated (to the point that it is not only anachronistic but arguably out of time), and ideologically insidious.
First/Third/Second World, East/West, Orient, Far/Near/Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Latin America, Europe as continent on par with the Asian supercontinent, China or India as a country on the same categorical level as say, Italy or France (ha)... these are all broken down, contested, somewhat reluctantly kept (a few of them) as labels that may still have some use after all.
I wish there could be more thinking put into critical metageography (and its "fetish for contiguity*"!).
*pathworks, lattices, rings, and archipelagos were suggested offhand as viable creative alternatives for mapping world regions
I'd been meaning to read a book like this for about three to four years now. It nagged: why won't anyone talk to me about the names and borders of continents and how little sense they really make? It must all be a horrendous mistake on the part of historical contingency and the whim of the imperialist textbook complex. It pervades: why does it still feel so odd to say "we're Asian-American"?
Lewis and Wigen don't touch too much upon ethnic and racial categories of identity, but that is not really their topic. Their subject is this world map we're indoctrinated with as children, a map that is both illogical, outdated (to the point that it is not only anachronistic but arguably out of time), and ideologically insidious.
First/Third/Second World, East/West, Orient, Far/Near/Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Latin America, Europe as continent on par with the Asian supercontinent, China or India as a country on the same categorical level as say, Italy or France (ha)... these are all broken down, contested, somewhat reluctantly kept (a few of them) as labels that may still have some use after all.
I wish there could be more thinking put into critical metageography (and its "fetish for contiguity*"!).
*pathworks, lattices, rings, and archipelagos were suggested offhand as viable creative alternatives for mapping world regions
July 6, 2025
The main flaw of this book is that it takes a line of criticism that, even at the time of writing, was pretty well-inhabited and theorized, and presents it as if it’s something totally original. Metageography is just their term for something that was being talked about and critiqued well before this book was written — post-quantitative revolution geography (really, anti-quantitative revolution geography) was heavily dealing with this in the late 60s and 70s. Critical cartography was saying all this and more about maps and mapping categories, J.B. Harley pretty much made a name off of it.
What *is* original and valuable about this book — what makes it truly worthwhile despite my above criticism — is that connects these critiques pretty directly to post/anticolonialism. Even then, it could’ve been more explicit, but directly linking continents and metageographical categories to colonial expansion is a vital link that somehow went under-theorized. In many ways, too, it’s incredibly difficult to argue against, and this book has earned its place as a relative titan in the modern geographic canon precisely because of how tight the arguments are. Again, that’s not to discount the above criticism, but it is to say that this is nonetheless a book of pretty rock-solid theory, even if that criticism is more rooted than they want you to believe.
What *is* original and valuable about this book — what makes it truly worthwhile despite my above criticism — is that connects these critiques pretty directly to post/anticolonialism. Even then, it could’ve been more explicit, but directly linking continents and metageographical categories to colonial expansion is a vital link that somehow went under-theorized. In many ways, too, it’s incredibly difficult to argue against, and this book has earned its place as a relative titan in the modern geographic canon precisely because of how tight the arguments are. Again, that’s not to discount the above criticism, but it is to say that this is nonetheless a book of pretty rock-solid theory, even if that criticism is more rooted than they want you to believe.
September 1, 2025
This is a useful book to think about the social construction of geographical categories. But its singling out of Southeast Asia as a region without "world regional status" is surprisingly selective, clumsy and outdated, even for a book published in 1997, ignoring scholarship that has demonstrated the distinct nature of Southeast Asian cultures, polities, and societies (Oliver Wolters' work on the "cultural matrix", for instance, is not cited).
While I take the trenchant point that "Western academics have endeavored "to authenticate Southeast Asia as a region and a field of study" in part because of their vested interests as Southeast Asian specialists", I'm not entirely persuaded about Lewis and Wigen's attempts to substitute one set of Western metageographical concepts with another.
So: a very useful book to think on the artifice of geographical categories; less so when they assert their own.
While I take the trenchant point that "Western academics have endeavored "to authenticate Southeast Asia as a region and a field of study" in part because of their vested interests as Southeast Asian specialists", I'm not entirely persuaded about Lewis and Wigen's attempts to substitute one set of Western metageographical concepts with another.
So: a very useful book to think on the artifice of geographical categories; less so when they assert their own.
March 22, 2024
some of the assumptions are confusing, like how the author challenges certain geographic terminology but not others—why spend many pages problematizing & studying the history of the term "middle east" but then use country names and "the Levant" completely uncritically?
some of the last chapters also felt less interesting and reminded me how there is often pressure to put in some constructive suggestions at the end of a critique lol
but overall a fascinating take on how continents and other geographical demarcations reinforce white/european supremacy and how efforts to move away from that often reproduce the same inequities. I would love a 2024 update on how recent geopolitical developments have shifted perceptions of these terms.
some of the last chapters also felt less interesting and reminded me how there is often pressure to put in some constructive suggestions at the end of a critique lol
but overall a fascinating take on how continents and other geographical demarcations reinforce white/european supremacy and how efforts to move away from that often reproduce the same inequities. I would love a 2024 update on how recent geopolitical developments have shifted perceptions of these terms.
April 25, 2019
Very good, interesting, and persuasive. A good reading to assign to world history classes.
July 25, 2019
What dogshit!
March 7, 2021
I like the idea but it was very repetitive at times.
September 19, 2022
so boring and confusing.
March 11, 2014
This was some good shit. So, the way to my academic-heart is to name-drop Edward Said a few times. Lewis and Wigen definitely deliver in that category.
One of my roommates made fun of me reading a book called "The Myth of Continents." His challenge that continents exist as some sort of ahistorical, permanent entity really empowers Lewis and Wigen's underlying argument that when we believe the organization of our world to be anything but a cultural construct, we're gonna be in for a bad time.
Also, it probably didn't help said roommate appreciate the book's argument because I was reading the book in such a manner that the cover was upside down. I bought this book at a wonderful used bookstore in Burlington, VT (Crow Bookshop shout out here), and either the book is published in a way that it is read by flipping the book upside down and reading right page to left, or someone rebound the book in such a fashion that I had to read my copy by flipping and reading right page to left. Either way, it was brilliant, since the basic argument of the book is how we organize the world on a basic, "continental" level needs to be redefined. What a better way to get the full aesthetic of this claim than to force the dude reading this book to flip it around like a nut.
Anyways, Lewis and Wigins go through the usual post-structuralist movements of totally deconstructing a notion that previously, or pre-Said, seemed unassailable; primarily targeted conceptions are the Occident and Orient, East and West, Europe occupying a disproportionate amount of academic space when compared the the supercontinent of Asia, and the labeling of "sub-continents" or "continents" as the outgrowth of European colonialism. The standard Edward Said special! They did a great job at it! The only area I would've enjoyed to read a bit more on are more of their ideas on where to go in the future. They offered one short portion of a chapter to say "Hey yo, this is how we think you should organize the globe," which was good. But I'd love to read a bit more on the differences between Ibero-America and Africa America, or more on Southwest Asia and why they think the Balkans (like usual) are so god damned difficult to fit into one mapping scheme or another. But, hey, still a great book. Very solid endnotes, too, if that's your sort of thing.
Read if: your Said-boner is as big as mine; you want a great history of geography (or metageography); you want to learn new and sophisticated ways to describe old and antiquated places.
One of my roommates made fun of me reading a book called "The Myth of Continents." His challenge that continents exist as some sort of ahistorical, permanent entity really empowers Lewis and Wigen's underlying argument that when we believe the organization of our world to be anything but a cultural construct, we're gonna be in for a bad time.
Also, it probably didn't help said roommate appreciate the book's argument because I was reading the book in such a manner that the cover was upside down. I bought this book at a wonderful used bookstore in Burlington, VT (Crow Bookshop shout out here), and either the book is published in a way that it is read by flipping the book upside down and reading right page to left, or someone rebound the book in such a fashion that I had to read my copy by flipping and reading right page to left. Either way, it was brilliant, since the basic argument of the book is how we organize the world on a basic, "continental" level needs to be redefined. What a better way to get the full aesthetic of this claim than to force the dude reading this book to flip it around like a nut.
Anyways, Lewis and Wigins go through the usual post-structuralist movements of totally deconstructing a notion that previously, or pre-Said, seemed unassailable; primarily targeted conceptions are the Occident and Orient, East and West, Europe occupying a disproportionate amount of academic space when compared the the supercontinent of Asia, and the labeling of "sub-continents" or "continents" as the outgrowth of European colonialism. The standard Edward Said special! They did a great job at it! The only area I would've enjoyed to read a bit more on are more of their ideas on where to go in the future. They offered one short portion of a chapter to say "Hey yo, this is how we think you should organize the globe," which was good. But I'd love to read a bit more on the differences between Ibero-America and Africa America, or more on Southwest Asia and why they think the Balkans (like usual) are so god damned difficult to fit into one mapping scheme or another. But, hey, still a great book. Very solid endnotes, too, if that's your sort of thing.
Read if: your Said-boner is as big as mine; you want a great history of geography (or metageography); you want to learn new and sophisticated ways to describe old and antiquated places.
February 1, 2013
This book raises an important concern about how we draw regions for the purposes of area studies. Addressing concerns over strategies behind regionalisms and area studies, from traditions of orientalism to geo-political interests. However, I don't get much out of this book that doesn't already exist elsewhere. Even worse, the attempt to redraw regions toward the end of the book do not serve to create a better, or even reasonable, redistribution of boundaries, but serve better to show just how absurd regionalisms generally are. This book is worth avoiding.
January 14, 2012
Perhaps a little longer than it needs to be, but 'Myth' does remind me to treat 'continents' as the cultural constructs that they are. No, Europe and Asia are NOT continents. 'Asia' should be banned entirely.
shelved
July 5, 2011...examining the metageography concept, from continental systems to world regions and encompassing ideologies and social constructs related to such...
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